Iosephi Scaligeri Ὀλυμπιάδων ἀναγραφή

Full title: Iosephi Scaligeri Ὀλυμπιάδων ἀναγραφή: Prolegomena de Olympiadum recensu universe et de auctore eius Iosepho Scaligero scripta praemesit, notas tum Mauricii Dittrichii tum suas, veterum scriptorium locis, et Scaligeriani huius opusculi et totius fere historiae antique fontibus, instructas subiecit, denique indices Olympionicarum, archontum, scriptorium locupletissimos addidit Evaldus Scheibel Ph. Dr.

4to. pp. viii, lxxviii, 232. Signatures: [pi]4 A-K4 1-294. In Greek with Latin commentary.

The present work includes an edition of the ‘Olympiad’ section of Joseph Scaliger’s Thesaurus (1606; 1658). Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609) was an eminent scholar–and great bugbear of forgers–who set traps for the unwary or unlearned. His Olympiadon anagraphe, or chronology of Olympiads, was presented to the reading public in Greek, for no obvious reason other than to suggest (but not assert, nor deny) that it was an ancient text discovered by Scaliger. Likewise, his (dubious) reconstruction of a lost work of ‘Astrampsychus’ from a string of unattributed verses may be a mere experiment in philology, but by never explaining himself, he tempted all but a circle of friends and learned colleagues to accept the attribution on personal faith. Both jeux were published in Scaliger’s monumental Thesaurus temporum (1606, see Bib# 4102899/Fr# 380 in this collection) and deceived many contemporary and subsequent scholars, notably Reinesius, Heyne, Lessing, and Bayle; the ‘authenticity’ of the Olympiads list remained in some question until the present work, a massive analysis of Ewald Scheibel (1819-1873), demystified it.

See A. Grafton, Joseph Scaliger. A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, Oxford & New York, 1993, ii, pp.549ff., and (for Scheibel’s exhaustive edition) 550-51, 554-55, 558; A. Freeman, “Hoax and Forgery, Whimsy and Fraud: Taxonomic Reflections on the Bibliotheca Fictiva,” in W. Stephens & E. Havens (eds.), Literary forgery in early modern Europe, 1450-1800, Baltimore, 2018, p. 26.

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